Tuesday, 2 March 2010

Georgia O'Keeffe - Ladder to the moon

In 1958, O'Keeffe painted Ladder to the Moon. The painting shows a handmade wooden ladder suspended in the turquoise sky. In the background are the pitch black Pedernal Mountains and a pearl colored half moon. This painting was very similar to a picture taken of O'Keeffe and her surroundings at Ghost Ranch. In the picture, a large wooden ladder is leaned against an outer wall of a patio from where it rises up into the sky with the Pedernal Mountains in the background. Some say her immediate surroundings at Ghost Ranch were the inspiration of this piece of art. Others interpret the painting as a religious work. In Pueblo culture the ladder is used to symbolize the link between the Pueblos and cosmic forces. The fact that the ladder is pointed up in the sky may represent the link between nature and the cosmos.

3 comments:

The most upsetting thing about losing my phone was that I lost a photo which I'd taken near Kings X where they were building a huge block of flats with a chunk of a concrete staircase being hauled up against the clear blue sky! Literally stairway to heaven!! could've won me photo competitions that.